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by elle_nic



Series: Hallway Portraits [2]
Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: Domestic, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Kinda, Light-Hearted, autonomy whomst???, i dont know if im gonna write another, i havent made a decision in months, i might, i might not tho, its a sequel to focus, like a little bridge between focus and an actual depthful sequel, monkey brain makes these decisions, not me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26562664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_nic/pseuds/elle_nic
Summary: Life's good. Children get older, lovers love, and happy endings are barely endings at all.Or;the sequel to focus that i still get comments about to this day lmao xx
Relationships: Caroline Priestly & Cassidy Priestly & Andrea Sachs, Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs
Series: Hallway Portraits [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931860
Comments: 27
Kudos: 262





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I genuinely laughed as I read through this. God, I'm funny sometimes.

_The New York Mirror_ was not Miranda’s favourite paper to read, but Andréa had been insisting for years now that they had to support printed news, and Miranda, as she sometimes did, had conceded to her. What she wouldn’t compromise on was coffee, even if Andréa had tried to disillusion her on Starbuck’s palm oil consumption and its negative effects on the environment. Miranda had few things she clung to, but by god, coffee would be one of them.

“Anything fun?” Andréa said as she walked into the kitchen, clasping a styling pendent around her slender neck.

“Supreme court this and Cuba that,” Miranda responded dryly. “Where are the girls?”

“I told them they better be down here before you finished your coffee or you’d do something, like, discipline-y,” the brunette said distractedly. She had barely finished putting on her necklace before she was rifling in the fridge, presumably for the fruit salad Miranda’d made the night before.

“Thank god you’re not a journalist or something else requiring eloquence,” Miranda chuckled, turning back to her paper. She sipped absently at her coffee, only getting halfway through when the twins came down the stairs, tired but dressed and looking to be ready for school.

“Good morning, zombies mine,” Miranda said, raising her cheek to be kissed by each of her daughters. Caroline’s fine red hair tickled her cheek as it swished around, loose rather than tied back like Cassidy’s.

“Morning, mom,” they said. “Morning, Andy.”

“Sleep well? Eat that,” the brunette said, sliding two bowls of fruit and yoghurt to the fairly braindead redheads. They nodded negligently, tucking in to their food and chewing with haste, but exactly as mannerly as Miranda expected.

“Anything fun?” Cassidy asked Miranda, always the first to recover from being dragged into wakefulness. Miranda grinned at just how similar the girls could be to Andréa in mannerisms and idiosyncrasies.

“Doom and gloom and comics,” Miranda said.

“Nothing can top last month’s news,” Caroline said after swallowing a piece of honeydew. “Speaking of,” she began.

“When are you guys getting married?” Cassidy finished.

Andréa, who had been cleaning Miranda’s breakfast plate and preparing herself a mug of her ethically sourced (and frankly, disgusting) coffee turned to the girls just the same as Miranda did. Shocked into a thoughtful silence, neither of the adults managed a response for several long moments. Such a huge question asked so bluntly by barely eleven-year-old children…

“Woah, are you guys serious? The Act passed, like, nearly a month ago.”

“You haven’t talked about it yet?”

“Um, we… well, no,” Andréa stuttered. She really was very ineloquent sometimes. Miranda vaguely thought about getting her to read a more varied selection of books to battle that.

“Time’s a wastin’,” Caroline said, gathering her and her sister’s bowl and rinsing them both before the two young girls left to gather their things. Their driver would be there in ten minutes to collect them, Miranda noticed with an awkward glance at her wristwatch.

“I feel so old when they talk like that,” Miranda huffed, shutting the paper and folding it. She tossed it aside but made a note not to throw it away.

“They have your impeccable sense of timing,” her partner said, knocking back the last of her coffee.

Miranda was inclined to agree with her. Andréa, a formidable photographer of her own right, was due to fly out of New York within the following five hours to Germany for a three-day shoot. With Miranda’s weekend trip to San Francisco immediately following Andréa’s return, it would be at least five days until they could have _that_ particular conversation face to face… Miranda pursed her lips at the notion that she’d have to _wait_. She hated waiting.

“Timing sucks, but we’ll talk on it,” Andréa said, approaching Miranda and standing between her legs from where Miranda was perched on a barstool. She leaned down and kissed Miranda’s cheek, brushing away the slight lipstick stain left on her pale cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Miranda replied without hesitation.

The rest of the morning spent in the townhouse was brief, all four of the women having places to be. The girls gave Andréa tight hugs, making her promise to bring them back a souvenir from Germany before rushing off to be dropped off to school. Miranda and Andréa lingered in the foyer, Andréa’s luggage by the door reminding Miranda that her lover would not be home that night or for the next few. They kissed slowly, the rare moment of privacy and intimacy coloured with sadness at being away from each other.

“Be home soon, okay?” Andréa said, wiping Miranda’s smudged lipstick.

“Okay,” Miranda said. She did her best not to sound downcast, but she’d never been terribly good at fooling Andréa.

Miranda’s car arrived before Andréa’s, which meant that as Miranda’s ride pulled away from the curb, she was sustained by the image of Andréa blowing her a kiss and waving her off. She smiled at the brunette and blew a discreet kiss back before she lost sight altogether of the woman.

Only a few days, she reassured herself.


	2. Chapter 2

Returning home that evening to her daughters was the highlight of Miranda’s day, even if she already missed Andréa. She’d received a text from the brunette as she arrived to the airport and again just before she took off. They’d exchanged a, personally, embarrassing number of emoticons, but it had made Miranda feel a little better. Not _better_ enough to have accepted the obviously rushed run-through as a final selection, but that was a problem for Jocelyn.

The girls were equally subdued that evening without Andréa at home. It had almost made her delay the talk she wanted to have with them, but she knew the next day would be busier than usual and she’d likely work late. And Miranda absolutely hated to wait, and especially hated waiting to have important conversations. She’d learned her lesson early on with Andréa to simply bite the bullet and talk about what was on her mind. She’d carried the habit over into her relationship with Caroline and Cassidy as they’d grown from children to preteens (in what felt like five minutes, too).

“Have you both been thinking very much about whether Andréa and I will marry?” Miranda said in the ad break of the _Seinfeld_ reruns the girls were occasionally fond of.

“Not, like, obsessively.”

“We just think it’d be silly to wait,” Caroline added. Miranda hummed

“Silly, how?”

“You and Andy have been together for ages, mom. She’s basically our mom as well, we just call her Andy.”

“And before, you both totally had the excuse that you literally couldn’t get married, but now you can!”

“Well, girls, marriage isn’t always about whether you _literally_ can or cannot get married. For some relationships, it’s not the end goal,” Miranda explained. “That’s not to say Andréa and I have no goals to marry. I simply mean it isn’t everyone’s goal in life.”

“Everyone else doesn’t matter, though,” Cassidy argued. “We just think it would be silly to not get married if you’re gonna be together forever.”

Miranda would have continued to debate the topic with her children, but she was summarily hushed as Elaine appeared back on screen, hissing nervously while taking some issue with George. Miranda watched distractedly as the episode progressed, busy thinking what shade of cream would draw forth the pink tones in Andréa’s skin…

.oOo.

_Landed in Berlin! Gonna get a bratwurst and a beer at first opportunity! A xx_

Miranda smiled and rolled her eyes, replying to Andréa’s text and briefly wondering if the girls would enjoy going to Germany for a holiday.

_Girls remain firm on you becoming Mrs Priestly, by the way._

_You mean they’re firm on you becoming Mrs Sachs, I’m sure._

Miranda chuckled and settled into bed, plugging in her phone and setting her alarm before she forgot.

_Hardly._ _Heading to sleep now. Have a wonderful day, Mrs Priestly. x_

_Sleep tight, Mrs Sachs <3_

Miranda thought she should really try to roll her eyes less. It couldn’t be healthy.

.oOo.

_San Francisco is exactly as miserably windy as I recall._

Andy smiled groggily at her phone as she swam up from the depths of the best nap she’d had in recent memory. Working three full days on a shoot and then flying on top of that had taken it out of her, but she’d take advantage of the days where she could bounce back with a quick nap as long as she could. God knows she would be twice as tired and half a graceful as Miranda if their roles were reversed.

_Send a windswept pic?_

_[Mrs Sachs: jpeg attached]_

Andy laughed and saved the photo of Miranda sat upon a director’s chair, chin in the palm of her hand and hair blowing in all directions.

_Can’t text for a little while. Wind makes models go insane, apparently. God help me._

_Good luck, Mrs Sachs!_

_> :(_


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end...?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone was a bit critical towards me about this fic recently so my confidence was knocked, but lmao its done now x

“Andy!”

“Hey, honey,” Andy said, catching an eleven-year-old in each arm. She’d missed seeing them before school that day having arrived back home at a little past eleven that morning. She’d missed the girls though, and as per their tradition, homework was put on the backburner and gifts and catching up were prioritised for the afternoon. Andy got the (allegedly) gripping gossip about Dia and Kai from school who had started a dance group while Caroline marvelled at her snow globe and Cassidy flicked through the German nature magazine Andy’d thought they would like.

“Mom was sad she missed you this morning,” Caroline said once all the fresh news had dried up. Cassidy looked surreptitiously to her sister and then Andy.

“Yeah? I missed her, too.” Andy wasn’t sure what the segue was leading into, but she did have an inkling.

“Do you want to marry mom?”

Andy considered the question for a moment before answering, knowing just how long kids could remember seemingly offhanded things that were actually of great importance to them.

“Your mom and I are already deeply committed to each other, so even if we didn’t get married, I certainly wouldn’t be going anywhere,” Andy managed after some thought. Caroline didn’t look up from her gift, and Cassidy seemed to focus rather intently on a page in her magazine. “What’s going on?” she asked them outright, though gently.

“It’s stupid that you won’t get married,” Cassidy said with a frown.

“It just totally seems like the thing to do,” Caroline said.

Andy sighed and moved to sit between them on the floor of the family room, looping her arms around their shoulders and pulling them to her.

“I know what you mean. I used to get so confused when I heard that my friends’ parents weren’t married. Like, why wouldn’t you? You have a kid or kids with that person, and you love each other, and you don’t ever plan to break up. But as I got older I realised that marriage can be a lot of pressure.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if you’re already as good as married, why would it be necessary to _actually_ get married? It didn’t make sense for the longest time, but sometimes being married makes people feel trapped, and other times it makes people feel really secure. I think sometime the people who don’t actually want to get married, marry out of pressure from others, and then the marriage ends unhappily because it didn’t start from a genuine place. Does that make sense?”

“Do you think being married would make you feel trapped?”

Andy knew she was in rocky waters and navigating out of them would be tricky. But for all Miranda’s jabs at being ineloquent, she had a pretty decent time of making things make sense, especially to Caroline and Cassidy.

“I think it would make me very happy, but I don’t think I need to get married to be that happy at all. I love you both so much, and your mom is the love of my life. We’re just like a married couple in how we live. But getting married isn’t something that you just do on a whim, or because you can or you feel others think you should. It’s a very important decision, and it won’t be made lightly, if your mom and I ever sit down and consider it. And if we do that, you’ll both be there, because your input is really important to us. Yeah?”

The girls nodded against her shoulder, but Andy could sense something else was playing on their minds. Surprisingly, it was Caroline that raised hers and her sister’s concern.

“If you’re not married then you and mom can just, like, break up,” she said quietly. Andy frowned.

“Do you think we’ll break up?” Caroline only shrugged.

“Breaking up is easier than divorcing, I think.”

“Only legally, honey. A divorce is a break up, too. But I’m not going to ever break up with your mom. I don’t think there’s a problem on the planet we couldn’t solve together.”

“We love you, Ma,” Cassidy said. They only called her Ma on special occasions, and it never failed to make Andy tear up.

“I love you both, too. To the stars and back. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Now, tell me, did Heather make the soccer team?”

.oOo.

“Hello, Mrs Sachs,” Andy grinned into Miranda’s neck as they hugged for the first time in nearly a full week.

“Your cheek never goes unnoticed, Mrs Priestly.”

“Thank god! I put too much effort into it for no acknowledgement!”

“I bet. How were the girls?”

Andy pulled back and kissed each of Miranda’s cheeks twice over before pulling her further into the house.

“They were good. We got up to socially acceptable levels of mischief in your absence,” the brunette joked as she led Miranda up to their bedroom where she wanted to just lay with her lover for an hour or ten.

“Heavens above. They don’t suspect?”

“Not at all,” Andy said. “They’re actually pretty fixated on our lack of marital status to pick up on much of anything else.” Andy watched as Miranda frowned quizzically at that. Andy explained the conversation she had about marriage dynamics with the girls the day she got back from Germany as she undressed Miranda top to toe.

“Perhaps you have a passable eloquence,” Miranda joked, undressing Andy in return. “I bet they understood better after that?”

“They did,” Andy confirmed, guiding Miranda under the covers and manipulating the woman’s limbs so she could curl luxuriously behind her, skin to skin. She took a long moment to appreciate Miranda’s closeness and her familiar, delightful scent. “They still seem firmly rooted in the ‘for’ side of us marrying, though.”

“Well, certainly something to have a proper conversation about later,” Miranda said lowly, squirming as Andy’s hands wandered.

“Later? Not right now, Mrs Sachs?”

“Mrs Priestly, you seem to be under the impression I enjoy waiting…”

“Consider me disillusioned,” Andy said, rolling on top of her woman. There was only a few hours before they had to collect a package for the twins, but as Andy kissed behind Miranda’s ear, she felt there was certainly enough time to reacquaint herself with her lover.

.oOo.

“Mom!”

The girls, having just arrived home from school, were a little gentler with Miranda than they were with Andy, but that was probably down to the fact that Andy would honest to god wrestle with them. As it were, Miranda was gently but tightly embraced, and kisses were exchanged between each of the Priestly women.

“Did you get us a surprise, mom?”

Miranda grinned conspiratorially at Andy over the heads of their daughters.

“I did, but I had to get one once I was back in New York,” Miranda said, trying valiantly (and succeeding for the most part) in hiding her grin. The girls’ faces fell, but they were too well-mannered to actually complain about the origins of their gift.

“It’s in the den,” Andy said from behind them. It was enough for them to shoot off in the direction of the den. “3,” Andy said. “2…1…”

“ _Oh my god!”_

_“We have a dog! There’s a dog in our house!”_

By the early evening, the newest member of the household, a goofy St Bernard named Patricia (Patrick would lose his mind) had been held and kissed and played with within an inch of her life. The image of the girls playing tug of war with Patricia on the rug while Andy and Miranda sat upon the couch radiated pure homeliness. Andy was pretty sure there couldn’t be a thing in the world she wanted in that moment. She was fulfilled.

“Mom, Andy?”

“Yes, Bobbsey?”

Caroline, who had up until then been busy with Patricia, looked at her mother and Andy dead in the eyes, and with a face of pure innocence, spoke.

“I’m really excited for the wedding.”


End file.
